Imagine that you are 13 years old and living with your parents. You admire and adore both of them, your mother's kindness and your father's intelligence, and you wish that when you grow up, you will meet someone and together be like them.

But one day, you accidentally overhear a conversation in which your father, frustrated and angry, calls you ugly.

This will be the end of your childhood.

The shattering of the sweet glass bubble that has kept you enclosed and protected all these years.

The abrupt reality.

The deceptive life of adults.

This happened to Giovanna, the protagonist of the book.

"What was happening in short in the world of adults, in the minds of these sensible people, in their bodies that carried so much knowledge? What was it that turned them into sly animals, worse than reptiles?"

I have shocked myself with how much I actually like Ferrante. It's completely outside my "expected" tastes, and I never thought I would get hooked like this, but here we are.

Having loved the Neapolitan quartet, which has been described by many as her most mature work, I had my reservations about her other books. However, I was thrilled when I realized that from the very first pages of The Lying Life of Adults, I was addicted.

Although the book starts with something seemingly simple, it grabs you along the way, and with its addictive, torrential writing, full of depth and detail, it magnetizes you, making it impossible to stop reading.

Ferrante has masterfully crafted the character and psyche of a teenager who lived in her pink cloud until the moment a wind blew and the cloud disappeared, revealing the disgusting reality. A teenager who sees the "world of adults" she so admired as a child, being revealed and proving to be more rotten than anything she could have imagined. 

"-Those who love each other fear that they are not loved.

-If someone lets you live in agony, how is it nice to love them?"

The author, with mastery, takes us back to Naples, with beautiful descriptions and intense characters full of flaws that annoy you but you somehow understand. She talks to us about adolescence, human relationships, religion, love, family, and a host of other topics, through Giovanna's first-person narrative, without neglecting the secondary characters at all. On the contrary, she focuses on everyone, something I really like in her books. 

I didn't like the ending again, but I want to believe the story will continue as I feel it didn't close.

It would be a sin to cut 0.5 stars [as I was thinking] because of the ending, so:

 [5/5] from me!

A gem that should not be missing from any library.

Note: The book has also been made into a series on Netflix, titled "The Lying Life of Adults." I haven't seen it yet, but it's in my immediate plans.